March 26, 2006

Friday sessions (transcribed notes)

"Readers’ Maps: Blending Fiction and Nonfiction Readers’ Advisory Through Reading Itineraries" – Friday 3/24 Cathleen Towney, Nancy Pearl, Neal Wyatt

Online
Include websites, music, videos, children’s materials, fiction, and nonfiction
Good way to promote collections over computer access
Use for displays and include everything on the list (children’s, media, etc.)
Link to covers
Any book that hasn’t been read is new to that person

"Itineraries for … " www.uwb.edu/library/pearl
"Choose Your Destination"
Link to titles—then link those titles to other
titles, etc.
Overbooked—overbooked.org

All pathfinders in your library should contain the same information in a standardized format

Sorcery & Cecilia (Patricia Wrede)


"Guys Read" – Friday 3/24 Jon Scieszka, Erik Kraft, Jarrett Krosoczka, Timothy Basle Haring (sp?), Tony deTerlizzi

College demographics: 60%/40% (girls/guys)
CUNY grad rate: 70%/30% (girls/guys)
New book: Mr & Mrs God in the Creation Kitchen

Kraft
“I was a guy who read” BookHouse series

Krosoczka
Reading came from comics; those also led to art and drama

Basle Haring
All the guys in his family read, except him
Had an art school teacher who said: “Books need pictures. What do you need words for?”
Frog Belly Rat Bone
Diary of Victor Frankenstein illustrated on a boat trip from FL to Guatemala

deTerlizzi
Spiderwick books
Loved to read, lived in a house full of books
The problem is that the books on reading lists aren’t cool
D&D –just a bunch of books
Choose Your Own Adventure

How to get kids into libraries:
Big colorful posters
Movie/book tie-ins
Manga
Outreach with schools—make it fun, and fun destination
Parents reading to kids, especially reading books that the ADULTS enjoy
Good, skillful reading—intonation is important
Is reading a “feminized” activity?
Non-fiction doesn’t count as reading for school purposes
“Reading at school is pointless”--what boys think
Accelerated Reader Program (major booing from the audience)
Doesn’t include much nonfiction
Competition factor spurs guys
There need
to be rewards (money, candy)
The Day My Butt Went Psycho
Book-making programs (where kids create books of their own words and pictures)
Drawing contest: take a book that has no illustrations and have kids illustrate it AND DISPLAY IT! They have to read it first
Or, take a book with illustrations and have them redo it “right”
Web journalism—during the summer
Hennepin County Library
Small display of “Guys Read” shelf surrounded by Guys Read “crime tape”
College kids as facilitators
Amy McNally (amcnally@hclib.org)

Boise
Brookline
Toilet Races

"Tea Isn’t the Only Thing That Will Float in Boston’s Harbor: Murder, Mayhem, and New England’s Finest Crime Writers" – Friday 3/24 Linda Barnes, Jeremiah Healy, William Tapply, Sandra Balzo

Gary Niebuhr: Make Mine a Mystery; Read Them Their Rites (book disc. ??s)

Crumb Cake Books

Appeal of New England (Boston) for an author
Linda: people walk outside, compact area, geographically diverse, archetypal New England characters
Bill: Boston is a city near lots of very different kinds of places

Why is water/fishing so important ?
Bill: grew up fishing and generally around water

New series is set in Boston, as his earlier one was—Why?
Jerry: missed the law after retiring as a law prof, this format made it easier to realistically portray a multitude of characters (he’s a former trial attorney and member of Sisters in Crime)

Can Brady lead too many people to the good fishing holes?
Bill: No. Only uses well-known ones, though he did give up his favorite one in NH.

Do people portrayed as “bad guys” ever complain?
Linda: No, but she’s careful about who she annoys. She does use real places for credibility

Are books written to show off Boston?
Jerry: if you want to know about the area, buy a tour book. However, by portraying Boston, by necessity, some parts do get shown off

Occupation of the series’ detective
Linda: switched from amateur (couldn’t sustain believability) to p.i. (where it made sense); wanted to write about a tough woman, and auditioned her in a short story; she also wanted to do a book about the way people drive in Boston…hence a cabbie
Jerry: didn’t think a book about an attorney as hero would work; his uncle was a p.i. and he knew several from his work as an attorney (he was also a member of the MPs in the military); p.i. novels make you root for a little vigilantism
Bill: “alter-ego thing;” even though his character is an attorney, he’s never actually written a courtroom drama scene; says he gets letters from attorneys saying he’s getting it about right—most of ‘em don’t really do that much in courtrooms anyway

Issues you won’t write about/Issues you’re dying to write about?
Jerry: nothing either way; he’s written about “right to die” and about the Boston priest-abuse scandal
Bill: "desperate for ideas" {hee}; wouldn’t write a love story or any social issue, since he writes about murder as a social issue
Linda: always writes about justice, not really about social issues

Collaboration is tricky: Jerry & Bill have swapped characters on occasion, but it’s complicated
Phil Craig/Bill Tapply—new book underway now

Do characters write the novels?
Jerry: No. He uses a VERY detailed outline. Hillerman uses the idea of the villain as the hero of his own story; PD James starts with the scene. Thinks we are captives of the way we structure our lives now.
Linda: Sometimes, if character becomes real to her. She usually has an outline, but it doesn’t last.
Bill: He uses a very basic outline of who-killed-whom. There are two stories in the novel: the murder and the characters. Sometimes a character just pops out.

Inspirations
Jerry: Robert Parker, Marcia Muller, John D. McDonald
Linda: Arthur Conan Doyle
Bill: John D. McDonald, Dostoevsky (was he serious?)

Plotting—How does the puzzle/clue link come to you?
Linda: control freak, needs to know why/how things make sense
Bill: "It’s why we do it and you don’t."
Jerry: It’s what trial lawyers do anyway.

What gets you to sit down and write?
Bill: you just have to get your butt in the chair; guilt; ability to be your own boss
Linda: "guilt is important, and I’m ten of the stubbornnest people I know"; "The only thing worse than writing is not writing."
Jerry: discipline, diligence, persistence; "try to find the task in life which causes you to lose track of time passing."

“The Joy of Censorship” – Friday 3/24 Joe Raiola, MAD Magazine

Began the program playing songs banned by ClearChannel after 9/11

Religious figures in food, about a year before the Mohammed cartoon issue hit; they only got one call about portraying Mohammed in a pancake

The Bible proves censorship doesn’t work: see the story of the Garden of Eden. God failed as a censor, but people all over the world think they can do better than God.

We’re still afraid of words: Carlin—no bad words, just bad intentions and ideas
FCC declared (after the Golden Globes when Bono said it) that "f*ck" is no longer obscene if used as an adjective; then they reversed themselves 5 months later

There was a better and faster response to Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" that there probably would have been to Hurricane Janet

Delinquency is a problem of where a child lives, not what he (or she) reads

Self-censorship within an industry is still censorship

New mag: "Mad Kids" for 8-10 year olds.

EVENING RECEPTION Boston Public Library

Irish dancing, and lots of food, beautiful old building. 28 million items uncataloged (out of their collection of approx 33 million items).

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